As you know, I've been living with what looked like, at any moment, something that may mutate into a second head. The offending growth lived billimeters to the right of my right eye, and though it had humble beginnings, I was starting to think that perhaps it was some sort of curse put upon me by Adolf Hitler's ghost.

I called it "Sy, the sty nigh my eye"
Sometimes I would sigh and try
To look to the side and at my sty
But he knew I was looking
And that found him booking
Just out of my line of sight.

That's enough of the poem-ing. To make a long story short (ish), today I realized that it felt as if I had a lot of sleep stuck in my eye sty (Yes, it was big enough to gather the eyeboogers and let them go only after a stiff dressing-down from yours truly). But this sleep wouldn't go away. It turned out to be some sort of little detachment scab. Don't ask me why it started detaching. Maybe the grass was greener on the other side of the nose and it was planning a midnight transplant to the East Germany of my face. Perhaps it wanted to go visit the redwoods before winter. Or it could have wanted to see Colorado before it burns to the ground.

Or maybe it just died.

If that's the case, you could count sty years as 89 sty years to one human year (As opposed to dog years, which are about 7 dog years to one human year).

By midnight tonight, I was making frequent trips to the bathroom mirror (and toilet--I'm pissing like a racehorse since I started drinking coffee again) to look at my little dying buddy. He'd grown enough for me to be able to actually grab him 'twixt thumb and forefinger and tug a bit.

I was scared to go all the way though. Maybe the sty was broadcasting anti-pulling thoughts to my brain. Or maybe I'm just a wimp and didn't want to make it bleed.

By the third trip to the bathroom mirror (no need to pee this time, just to fiddle with my sick friend), I'd decided that this loose flesh tooth was no good and it would have to be removed. So I washed my hands (probably something I should have been doing before messing with it the other two times), and cleaned a little under my fingernails (but not too much; I'm about due for a good eye infection anyway). Then I grabbed Sy (that's his name) and tested his tinsel strength. It pulled my eyelid out of shape but held strong and showed no sign of coming loose.

I stood there and thought for a second. I was getting nervous. My hands were shaking a little. I felt similar to the way I felt when I tried to pierce my own nipple with a big safety pin. The realization that you are about to purposefully cause yourself a potentially great amount of pain always gets your endorphins overproducing.

I grabbed Sy the Sty again.

And my arm twitched. It really wasn't a voluntary action, but it had the desired effect.

My eye made a sound like it would if my contact lenses suddenly grew sentient and committed contact lens suicide by jumping from the skyscraper of my head. It was the sucking sound of air coming into the sudden vacuum between eyeball and eye socket. Then it was the whooshing sound as that same air was farted back out with authority directly proportional to the elasticity of my face's skin.

At first, I thought that Sy the Sty had slipped out of my fingers-as-tweezers grasp and I would have to go through the whole scary process again. I looked into the mirror. And then my right eye started seeing everything through a haze of red and blur. My left eye looked over and saw that his brother was filling up with blood. I looked at the sty in my hand and really didn't know how to process this information. The growth that should be on my eye was between my thumb and finger. I just stared at it while my eye took a bath in blood.

When I finally wrapped my brain around the new location of Sy and got my wits back, I washed my eye and the new wound with water, and applied cotton pads (probably the most sanitary bit of the whole operation) to stop the bleeding. I thought that my eyeball was going numb for a second or two, but I think that was just the hypochondriac in me. I HOPE that was just the hypochondriac in me.

I miss my eye sty, but there has been no post partum depression yet, but I'll keep you posted.

I present to you now, in the form of two email attachments, more detail than you ever wanted of my sentient skin tag. As if my story wasn't already more detail than you ever wanted to know.

One part of these images looks like red grapefruit pulp. Another part looks like a nickel. The following are true statements:
There is a nickel and a detached sty in both scans.
There is no grapefruit pulp in either scan.
Praise Jesus Christ, our lord in heaven, for discovering scanners.